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The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut at least 2,145 high-ranking Nasa employees with specialized skills or management responsibilities.

According to documents obtained by Politico, most employees leaving are in senior-level government ranks, depriving the agency of decades of experience as part of a push to slash the size of the federal government through early retirement, buyouts and deferred resignations.

The documents indicate that 1,818 of the staff currently serve in core mission areas, like science or human space flight, while the others work in mission support roles including information technology, or IT.

Asked about the proposed cuts, agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens told Reuters: “NASA remains committed to our mission as we work within a more prioritized budget.”

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Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.

Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”

Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.”

It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).

Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them.

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Astronomers have spotted a new comet, moving on a trajectory that indicates that it whizzed into our solar system from interstellar space and is just passing through.

It's only the third time scientists have discovered this kind of visitor from outside our solar system. The first two, 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov, intrigued astronomers because of the chance to observe pieces from another star system beyond our own.

"This is like our chance to randomly sample what's going on in the rest of the galaxy," University of Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott recently told NPR, saying he and most other researchers really hadn't given much thought to interstellar objects until the discovery of the first one in 2017.

Astronomers have spotted a new comet, moving on a trajectory that indicates that it whizzed into our solar system from interstellar space and is just passing through.

It's only the third time scientists have discovered this kind of visitor from outside our solar system. The first two, 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov, intrigued astronomers because of the chance to observe pieces from another star system beyond our own.

"This is like our chance to randomly sample what's going on in the rest of the galaxy," University of Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott recently told NPR, saying he and most other researchers really hadn't given much thought to interstellar objects until the discovery of the first one in 2017.

"I think the idea that we could see bits of other solar systems flying through our own really captivated the attention of a whole lot of people who started trying to work on these things," says Lintott.

NASA has named this latest interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, after detecting it this week with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile.

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Throughout the 20th and the first quarter of the 21st centuries, the US became a world leader in science, technology, healthcare, and education by investing in scientific research.

In 2025, that is rapidly changing, as unprecedented federal cuts, the defunding and closing of many institutions, and devastatingly reduced budgets present an extinction-level event for American science.

Just as the exodus of scientists and scientific projects from Nazi Germany became known as “Hitler’s gift” to the rest of the world, the actions of the US today seem similarly poised to reward the rest of the world. Here’s an insideMore...r’s view into what’s happening.

From World War II until 2024, the US stood unchallenged as the scientific leader of the free world. Across practically every discipline — physics, materials science, astronomy, chemistry, biology, medicine, geology, etc. — American scientific missions and initiatives, often in collaboration with European, Canadian, Asian, and many other global partners, brought us new advances and breakthroughs, paving the way for generations of scientists to thrive.

In a society that values facts, scientific truths, education, and the public good, this recipe led to multiple generations of continued breakthroughs and advances.

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Environmental advocates are questioning the actions of a private university in Louisiana after the resignation of a scientist who researches the health and job disparities in a heavily industrialized part of the state known as Cancer Alley.

Kimberly Terrell served as a director of community engagement and a staff scientist with Tulane University’s Environmental Law Clinic before resigning and accused university leaders of trying to censor the work she is doing to spotlight the harms to local communities plagued by industrial pollution.

Terrell said her research in collaboration with Floodlight highlighting job disparities in hiring at local petrochemical facilities triggered a backlash from state and Tulane leaders. That led to Terrell being put under an “‘unprecedented gag order” by the dean of the university’s law school, she said in a prepared statement issued by a group calling itself the Louisiana Alliance to Defend Democracy.

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A 2,500-year-old royal tomb has been discovered by archeologists at the site of an ancient city in Turkey.

After four months of excavations, Penn Museum and Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University archeologists discovered a well-preserved royal tomb chamber that dates back to 8th century BCE (800 to 701 BCE). The tomb's roof was collapsed, but objects inside remained intact, including bronze vessels used during banquets, iron rods, a pair of large bronze cauldrons and assorted smaller bronze cauldrons, jugs and bowls, according to a news release.

The tomb was discovered at the archeological site of Gordion, the capital of the Phrygian kingdom, which controlled much of Asia Minor during the first millennium BCE, Gordion Excavation Director C. Brian Rose said in a news release. Gordion is located in northwest Turkey, about 60 miles southwest of Turkey’s capital Ankara.

At one time, Gordion was ruled by King Midas, famously known for his "golden touch." Archeologists believe that the newly-discovered tomb may have belonged to a member of the Midas dynasty.

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